I’M AN IGOROT (published in the Baguio Midland Courier)
I’m an Igorot who likes bagoong.
It’s wonderful to see the intertwined aftermath of the diverse cultures in the Philippines. No Filipino could claim that he has a pure culture unless he lived as a hermit all his life.
Personally, I’d been through different derogatory connotations of my cultural background. Every June in my high school years, I was always a new classmate. When I transferred from Mountain Province to Manila, I usually became an object of ridicule being an Igorot, which is implied as a second-class citizen among lowlanders. When I went back to my hometown, my fellow Igorots look at me as an Igorot adulterated by my previous urban education. Either way, I could say that I was made culturally flexible. Exciting it was, but equally troublesome it also was since I hardly fixed a stable relationship with people. On the other hand, I became used to simultaneously facing a new environment and leaving an environment I have newly gotten used to. My accumulated experiences in rural and urban schools have greatly helped me out during my student teaching practicum at my alma mater, Baguio City National High School last November 2007 to March 2008. Such culturally diverse experiences have helped me a lot as a teacher per se.
Whenever I mention God’s name in the classroom, I had to juxtapose Allah’s name thereafter for the sake of my Muslim students. They, too, are looking unto a Sovereign One only in a different perspective. As a Christian, I have a duty to Christianize people. But as a teacher, I have a goal to show the complete big picture and let the individually different students exercise their sane volition. Just as they have the right to live, they also have the right to design their own lives. With our English lessons, it is but right for me to let the students look unto not God per se, but unto a Sovereign One.
I know how hard it is for Muslims to study with Christian teachers, Christian classmates, and Christian lessons in a Christian environment that recklessly vilifies Muslims as terrorists. I, too, have been a vilified stranger so many times since grade school up to college. I share the same sentiment of suffering from the judgmental eyes of prejudiced minds.
Despite individual differences, one thing is sure- all students want to laugh in the classroom, especially so in the Philippines where poverty is oppressive. Such is a challenging task. Again, students are individually different, which implies that the definition of ‘funny’ varies from person to person.
I love Madam Evelyn Garcia-Lleva, my dear critic teacher. She has paved the way for my growth as a green teacher like as showing me how to handle such individual differences complex. I was amazed by how she keeps the verve in the classroom with her clean and green words of wisdom (which means vulgarity to cynical moralists) without compromising the quintessence of the lessons. One day, I found myself in front of the students doing the same thing.
Out of the 273 evaluations I had from my students, three were against such clean and green words of wisdom. Well, we can never please everyone. I won’t compromise those three cynical moralists. But I’m sure that they have learned from my clean and green words of wisdom whether they admit it or not.
It’s not the diverse cultures that matter to us, anyway. It’s the way we make these diverse cultures matter to us.
Madam Evelyn Garcia-Lleva is an Ilocano and she likes pinikpikan.
